[Footnote 465: Charge, p. 43. Horsley
rather lays himself open in this passage to the charge
of confounding history with mythology; but probably
all he meant was to show the extreme antiquity of Trinitarian
notions.]

[Footnote 466: Evanson, Disney, Jebb, Gilbert
Wakefield, &c.]

[Footnote 467: Letters, &c. 243.]

* * * *
*

CHAPTER VII.

ENTHUSIASM.

Few things are more prominent in the religious history
of England in the eighteenth century, than the general
suspicion entertained against anything that passed
under the name of enthusiasm. It is not merely
that the age was, upon the whole, formal and prosaic,
and that in general society serenity and moderation
stood disproportionately high in the list of virtues.
No doubt zeal was unpopular; but, whatever was the
case in the more careless language of conversation,
zeal is not what the graver writers of the day usually
meant when they inveighed against enthusiasts.
They are often very careful to guard themselves against
being thought to disparage religious fervour.
Good and earnest men, no less than others, often spoke
of enthusiasm as a thing to be greatly avoided.
Nor was it only fanaticism, though this was especially
odious to them. Some to whom they imputed the
charge in question were utterly removed from anything
like fanatical extravagance. The term was expressive
of certain modes of thought and feeling rather than
of practice. Under this theological aspect it
forms a very important element in the Church history
of the period, and is well worthy of attentive consideration.

Enthusiasm no longer bears quite the same meaning
that it used to do. A change, strongly marked
by the impress of reaction from the prevailing tone
of eighteenth-century feeling, has gradually taken
place in the usual signification of the word.
In modern language we commonly speak of enthusiasm
in contrast, if not with lukewarmness and indifference,
at all events with a dull prosaic level of commonplace